Prerelease Software Downloads

Prerelease software enable us to provide early and frequent builds of our products under development. It enables us to collect your valuable, real-world feedback throughout the product development cycle, so that we can ship higher quality products. Sharing prerelease software with you help us innovate and deliver the products we know that you will continue to value and appreciate.

Release Candidate (RC) software is a version of the product (usually the most recent) that is deemed complete and stable enough to become the released version, but is being made available for customer evaluation of shipping readiness.

Beta software is an early build release that is not quite ready for use in production environments, but is of sufficient quality to enable evaluation for feedback about the software.

Previews enable us to provide more frequent releases to solicit early feedback that will help shape the software in its earliest stages.

Microsoft .NET Compiler Platform Preview

The .NET Compiler Platform project (codename "Roslyn") includes the next versions of the C# and VB compilers, as well as a compiler-as-a-service API that powers rich IDE integration, and opens up the compiler to many different types of developer integrations. For more information, see .NET Compiler Platform Preview.

Microsoft .NET JIT Compiler Preview

.NET JIT compiler preview (formerly known as "RyuJIT") enables developers to try out our next-generation JIT for .NET and CLR. With this release, we offer transparent but significant benefits to application startup and performance for x64 bit applications. For more information, see .NET JIT Compiler Preview

Microsoft .NET Native Developer Preview

.NET Native is an ahead-of-time compiler for .NET that leverages our C++ compiler's optimizer to offer improvements to startup time, memory usage, and overall application performance. In this preview release, we enable developers to try out this new compilation technology for Windows Store application targeting x64 or ARM architectures. For more information, see .NET Native Developer Preview.

Microsoft SIMD-enabled Vector Types Beta

Microsoft SIMD-enabled Vector Types is a library of instructions that provides SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) compilation support, which requires .NET JIT Compiler Preview. Using this library, developers can leverage SIMD support for SSE2 and VX instruction sets in modern processors, which is especially useful for numerical computing, gaming and image processing applications. Developers implementing this technique should expect to see significant increases in overall throughput of mathematical loops with these new Vector<> Types. For more information, see SIMD-enabled Vector Types Beta.

Application Insights Preview Tools for Visual Studio 2013

Visual Studio Online Application Insights is a new cloud-based service (currently in preview) that collects rich operational, performance, and customer usage information from server and client/device applications – whether they run on-premises, in Microsoft Azure, a third-party cloud provider, or a combination of all three. This Application Insights Tools for Visual Studio download makes it easy to create, configure, and test Application Insights telemetry collection for your applications, right from Visual Studio 2013. For more information, see Application Insights Preview Tools for Visual Studio 2013.

Azure Cloud Code Analysis Pack for Visual Studio 2015 Preview (NuGet)

This NuGet package uses the code analysis capabilities of the .NET Compiler Platform in Visual Studio 2015 Preview to identify coding patterns which cause performance, scalability or security problems with your Azure applications. By adding the Microsoft Code Analysis for Azure Nuget Package to your project you can detect code issues in real time as the code is being written in the editor. Some code analysis rules also suggest automatic fixes to your code.

Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova (CTP)

With Apache Cordova™ integration, Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova (CTP) provides the ability to build once and deploy to a variety of devices and platforms: iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Windows Store. Best of all, you get access to native Device APIs using only HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. For more information, see Multi-Device Hybrid Apps (Preview).

Node.js Tools 1.0 RC2 for Visual Studio

Node.js Tools for Visual Studio (NTVS) is a free, open-source plug-in that turns Visual Studio into a Node.js Integrated Development Environment (IDE). It supports a broad range of features including editing, IntelliSense, cross platform and remote debugging, edit and continue, npm integration, profiling, TypeScript, and an integrated REPL window. NTVS also includes a list of project templates that make it easy to quickly create and deploy websites to Microsoft Azure Websites or Cloud Services. For more information, see Node.js Tools for Visual Studio.

Visual Studio Emulator for Android (Preview)

Fast and reliable, easy to install and configure, the Visual Studio Emulator for Android enables you to easily switch between different platform emulators without Hyper-V conflicts. Visual Studio 2015 Preview is required to start the emulator the first time you run it. After you run it once, you can use the emulator with cross-platform tools like Cordova and Xamarin in Visual Studio 2013 Update 4. For more information, see Visual Studio Emulator for Android.

Visual Studio 2013 Update 5 (CTP 2)

This update is the latest in a cumulative series of bug fixes for Visual Studio 2013. Periodic updates enable us to enhance and expand Visual Studio more frequently to support the latest software development innovations for building and managing modern apps. For more information about the latest update, see a description of Visual Studio 2013 Update 5 CTP 2 .

Visual Studio 2015 Preview

Visual Studio 2015 Preview is an early, prerelease versions of the next major release of Visual Studio. This release provide early adopters with an opportunity to try out the new and improved product features, and the ability to share feedback with the product team. Learn more about what's new in the Visual Studio 2015 Preview release notes.

Team Foundation Server 2015 CTP

Team Foundation Server 2015 CTP is a pre-release version of the next major release of Team Foundation Server for our on-premises customers. This CTP provides early adopters with an opportunity to try out the new and improved product features, and the ability to share feedback with the product team. This release is not intended for use on production computers, or to create production code. For more details on this release, see the release notes.

Visual Studio 2015 (CTP 6)

Visual Studio 2015 CTP 6 is a pre-release version of the next major release of Visual Studio. This CTP provides early adopters with an opportunity to try out the new and improved product features, and the ability to share feedback with the product team. This release is not intended for use on production computers, or to create production code. For more details on this release, see the description of Visual Studio 2015 (CTP 6).